Single-player only games gone in three years says veteran designer

Veteran designer Mark Cerny sees single-player games without social elements as a dying breed that he says will be gone in three years.

At a special Sony-organized panel on the future of video games, veteran designer and consultant Mark Cerny offered his opinion that traditional single-player gaming will be gone in three years, reports Eurogamer. "Right now you sit in your living room and you're playing a game by yourself – we call it the sp mission or the single-player campaign. In a world with Facebook I just don't think that's going to last," said Cerny. A bold prediction, to be sure, but coming from someone with 15 games that have sold over two million copies, one that bears consideration.

Once past the initial shock of his statement, it turns out Cerny sees a change more in how we play games than what we're actually playing. "Right now you sit in your living room and you're playing a game by yourself – we call it the sp mission or the single-player campaign. In a world with Facebook I just don't think that's going to last," explained Cerny.

He then noted the unique way Demon Souls let's other players participate in your solo game as the first steps in this new direction. "The funny thing here is, we don't even know what to call this. Is it single-player or is it multiplayer? We don't even have the words…Yet, that will be the standard, I believe, in 2014," he conjectured.

Of course a lot of pieces will have to come together quickly to meet Cerny's timeline, not the least of which is designers crafting more meaningful interactions than simply posting to a news stream. It's hard to ignore his core points, though. With friends lists and social sharing increasingly a part of our daily routine, it's almost harder to not imagine things playing out this way.